Friday, February 19, 2016

Jessica Jones has been out for a fair while, so I wanted to put some numbers onto Luke Cage. He's a really interesting character in that he's really, really durable, except against blunt force trauma. I think I did a pretty good job slapping him together, though.

Carl Lucas was a talented athlete born to a preacher in Georgia and was best friends with a Willis Stryker (secretly his father's "love child"), who he got into all sorts of shenanigans with, including learning how to fight. Eventually, though, Carl and Willis were caught stealing a car for a joyride; Willis was sent to prison while Carl instead was allowed to go if he became a Marine Corpsman due to the influence of his father. After his tour of duty, Carl became a police officer in Savannah.

Years later, Carl was framed for a crime and sent to Seagate Prison. He met Reva Connors, the intervention councilor who he would eventually go on to marry, but was forced into a fighting ring run by corrupt prison security guards. After training and fighting for months, he was finally confronted by two other inmates—Shades and Comanche—who ganged up on him and beat him close to death.

Reva Connors, whose work as a councilor was a cover for screening subjects for an experimental scientific experiment to create superior human beings, convinced the lead scientist to put Carl through the procedure, hoping to cure him. There was a power surge, and the experiment accidentally provided Carl with superhuman durability and strength. Carl broke through a prison wall and swam from Seagate back to the Georgia shoreline.

Carl contacted Connors and changed his name to Luke Cage. She introduced him to "Pop" in Harlm, and she married Luke shortly afterwards. Reva, however, was tragically killed in an accident. Luke believed that there was more to the incident, however, and began to confront leads. Unfortunately, these led to a dead end.

Luke Cage had since acquired a bar that he runs with his friend Ron Healy. He's been down on his luck recently and has been sleeping with women, but refuses to sleep with married women on principle. One day, he slept with a P.I. named Jessica Jones, and found out soon after that she also has powers.

They briefly saw each other, connecting with each other over their powers, but she decided to cut ties with him to keep him away from something she was dealing with. He later hired Jessica to help him find information on the death of his wife, where she revealed that Reva was killed by her on accident. After his revelation, Cage cut ties with her instead.

Luke was later caught by a man named Kilgrave and mind controlled to blow up his own bar, convince Jessica to trust him, and then bring her to Kilgrave. He was forced to try and kill Jessica after Kilgrave's powers continued to not work on her, but she incapacitated him with a shotgun to the throat (unbreakable skin doesn't keep the organs from being rattled up inside).

After waking up in Jessica's apartment under the care of a nurse, and realizing that Jessica had gone to take care of Kilgrave, he left and moved from Hell's Kitchen to Harlem to try and start a new life.

Luke took a job with Pop in Harlem, living paycheck to paycheck and working two jobs to make a living. Luke was convinced to help find a troubled youth and bring him back to Pop's, however, which was supposed to be neutral ground, but a disgruntled gangster disrespected peace talks and shot up the shop, killing Pop. This helped put Luke into the spotlight as he began to fight against the crime organizations that led to Pop's death, including the notorious Cottonmouth, much to the chagrin of Harlem cop Misty Knight.

Soon into this crusade, however, Cottonmouth was found murdered, with Luke being framed for his killing. This put Luke on the run from the cops, as well as an independent agent calling himself "Diamondback," who severely wounded Cage using experimental military-grade Hammertech bullets. With the help of Claire Temple, he tracked down the scientist that originally concocted the serum to help her treat Luke, but Luke found out from old data files that Reva was actually working for the enhancement program that gave Luke his powers. Luke destroyed the scientist's barn and made his way back to New York.

Diamondback, actually Luke's long-lost friend Willis, sought revenge for Luke abandoning him, putting aside a black market empire that he had constructed to do so. Diamondback put out special Judas Bullets into circulation by using Mariah Dillard—Cottonmouth's sister—to lobby for the police commissioner to use them in apprehending Cage.

Eventually, Diamondback's rampancy did so much damage to himself that he deconstructed Harlem's most prominent crime families before attempting to (and failing) to attack Cage himself. Diamondback was beaten down and taken away, while Luke's antics have allowed him to be put on the national radar, allowing Georgia state officials to locate him. Luke is currently back in Seagate Prison, being held for the remainder of his sentence.
—DoctorBoson

Monday, February 15, 2016

To be honest, Ant-Man was one of the most difficult characters for me to make so far. He's a protagonist, obviously, but the mechanics of the shrinking mode was just odd to me; per the SPC2, shrinking doesn't modify your speed or jump distance. The other tricky thing are the growth/shrink disks that he uses; I wasn't sure to make those as Powers or as gear, but I ended up settling on the latter.

Super Edge (3): The Best There Is (shrink), Ultimate Power (shrink), Device (–1, Ant-Man Suit).

Scott Lang is not only an intelligent man, having gone through university to gain a masters degree in electrical engineering, but a rather successful burglar as well—mostly working in a Robin Hood-style fashion: stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. He promised his first love, Maggie, that he'd stop stealing after their daughter was born, but when he discovered the company he was working for was stealing funds from his customers, he went in for one last burglary. Unfortunately, this time he was caught.

He spent 5 years in jail, but when he got out he swore that he would only work legitimate jobs to make up for his time away. This, however, didn't work out well at all, and after being banned from seeing his daughter until he could make up for the child support he hadn't been able to pay, he decided to hit the house of a rich old man named Hank Pym.

Hank Pym planted an old super hero suit to see if Scott would be able to steal it away, but after realizing what the suit actually did—shrink him down to just over the size of an ant—Scott tried to return the suit, but was caught due to Hank's daughter, Hope. Eventually, they convinced him to attempt a heist on Cross Technologies—formerly Pym Technologies—to keep the Yellow Jacket suit from falling into the wrong hands, and Scott learned to use the suit and communicate with ants.

After fighting Falcon for a missing piece of tech, and learning how to use Pym's Particle Disks, the heist was a success. The Pym Tech building was destroyed with the Cross Particle and designs for the Yellow Jacket still inside.

Scott has since kept in touch with Pym, is likely involved with Hope, and is being sought after by the Avengers after his encounter with Falcon. And he's able to see his daughter on a regular basis again. All around happy endings.

The Particle Disks work to either Shrink something down to fit in the palm of your hand (Size –3 or –4 for just about anything), or make them grow to be the same size to normal humans as they were to an Ant-Man sized person. These disks do not stack on the same object. Yeah, it's not really something that makes a lot of sense but really, why would it? Shit's weird.
—DoctorBoson

Find a Hero!

Welcome!

From the ass that brought you Savage Everything! comes a blog solely dedicated to the Savaging of heroes, villains, and Extras from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (shorthanded as MCU)!

For those that are unaware, the MCU is the collection of movies and shows beginning with Iron Man back in 2008 produced in-house by Marvel. This includes The Avengers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Daredevil, among other works.

Again, to reiterate from the Ground Rules post, this will only be pulling from sources canon to the MCU—including some of the tie-in comics—but I won't be pulling from the comics universes, nor from movies produced by Fox or Sony, or any of the DC-verse (depending on how the cast ends up, I may end up creating their own separate Savageverse blog as well). If I miss a character (somehow) that you think deserves a spot on the blog, let me know!

If you like the MCU, check out the unofficial wiki for a fair bit of juicy content.

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“This game references the Savage Worlds game system, available from Pinnacle Entertainment Group at www.peginc.com. Savage Worlds and all associated logos and trademarks are copyrights of Pinnacle Entertainment Group. Used with permission. Pinnacle makes no representation or warranty as to the quality, viability, or suitability for purpose of this product.”